The Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the first human rights convention
of the 21st century, is one of the most far-reaching international documents in
history for the protection of marginalized individuals with disabilities. The
CRPD represents a paradigm shift in the area of disabilities by moving from a
medical or social approach to persons with disability, to a human rights model.
The holistic approach of the CRPD, as implemented through the principles of
universal design, is the most efficient and cost-effective method for
benefiting all persons with or without disability in higher education. This article is the first to
conceptualize and envision a human rights approach to United States higher education and disability law through the holistic application of
universal design in learning and instruction.

In the pursuit of educational justice, practice often outpaces theory. Theories of educational equality and adequacy have been understood to impose different demands. As generally conceived by equality theorists, justice dictates that all children have equal educational opportunities. Adequacy theorists typically construe the demands of justice as requiring that all children have access to a certain threshold of educational opportunities. Hence, the decades-long equality versus adequacy debate lingers over seemingly irreconcilable conceptual differences and legal impracticalities. My aim in this article is to enumerate the points of convergence between equality and adequacy and to show that their residual conflicting tenets are unsustainable in practice. Hence, equality and adequacy are not mutually exclusive; indeed, I contend that they are mutually reinforcing.